Each Day I Like It Better: Autism, ECT, and the Treatment of Our Most Impaired Children

In the fall of 2009, Amy S.F. Lutz and her husband, Andy, struggled with one of the worst decisions any parent could possibly face: whether they could safely keep their autistic ten-year-old son, Jonah, at home any longer. Countless behavior strategies, multiple medication trials, and a ten-month hospitalization all failed to control his violent rages. Desperate to stop the attacks that left them emotionally crushed and physically battered, Amy and Andy decided to try the procedure that has been called “the most controversial treatment in medicine”: electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).Each Day I Like It Better recounts Jonah’s ECT journey, including the countless failed interventions that drove his parents to consider ECT, his period under treatment, and his absolutely miraculous improvement. A survey of the most important research is incorporated into the narrative, and a foreword by child psychiatrist Dr. Dirk Dhossche and ECT researcher and practitioner Dr. Charles Kellner provides a basic understanding of ECT, explaining how and why it works, the side effects that patients may experience, and its use in the pediatric population in general and in autistic children in particular. Self-contained chapters feature other adolescents whose lives have been reclaimed through ECT.

From the early reviews:

"Amy Lutz shines a bright spotlight on the needs of the most severely affected children with autism, a group that has long suffered in the dark. These kids, whose lives are challenged by self-injurious behaviors and aggressive outbursts that drastically limit their ability to interact in the world, should have access to all evidence-based interventions that science indicates can improve their lives, including ECT." --Alison Singer, President, Autism Science Foundation"Amy Lutz takes us inside the mysterious world of autism and provides a heart-wrenching chronicle of what it is like to love a child with almost overwhelming needs. She gives voice to the thousands of parents who must face the almost unimaginable challenges of getting help for a child with autism, and describes the unanticipated benefits of electroconvulsive therapy. I recommend this book not just for parents of children with autism, but for anyone facing the physical and emotional rollercoaster of caring for a loved one with a devastating illness." --Eve Herold, Director, Office of Communications and Public Affairs for the American Psychiatric Association "In addition to being one of the most moving accounts imaginable of the love and devotion that parents of these challenging but splendid children bring forth, the book is also one of the best informed: Amy Lutz is thoroughly familiar with the scientific literature, and applies it to her own, stricken world to great effect. I myself was at times close to tears in opening this book, and I think other readers may be as well."--Edward Shorter, University of Toronto, co-author of Shock Therapy: A History of Electroconvulsive Treatment in Mental Illness